Irene's aftermath

Tropical storm Irene wasn't too hard on us here, in that no lives were lost. Several homes in Maine are still without power, however, and our home is one of them.

We do have a generator, thank heavens, so we have power off and on throughout the day. When the generator isn't providing power for us, it's providing power for our neighbors directly across the road. Ken has been working hard since noon on Sunday to keep both houses going. After we've had a few hours of electricity, Ken wheels the heavy generator across the road to our neighbors, hooks it up there, gives them a few hours of power, then wheels it back to us. I think he's getting tired of the ritual.

And here is the culprit: a downed tree at our neighbors just up the road. What gets me is this particular tree has lost a limb in a storm THREE TIMES in the past couple of years. The lost limbs always fall on our electric lines, resulting in a power outage. I think it's time that particular tree was put out of its misery.

I got my hopes up a couple of hours ago this morning when a Central Maine Power truck finally visited the site of this outage. Come to find out, it was here only to remove the downed limb. The power lines are still severed. Who knows when the lines will be replaced? Today? Tomorrow? Next week? According to news reports, there are so many power outages that some could take several days to be restored.

We lost a couple of trees in the storm. This limb broke off the tree where a pair of Baltimore orioles nested last year.

I know the damage could be much worse, of course. I've seen evidence on t.v. of washed-out bridges in western Maine and of terrible flooding in Vermont. We could have it a whole lot worse.